Ocean updates served in stragglers, flocks, and set waves

Heartland Kid Takes Sabbeachical

The Carnival of the Blue – a monthly collection of the best ocean blogs going – is still rolling along, even though you never hear about it from me any more.***

This month has been so wretched in terms of Scribble posts – and I don’t think I’ve even mentioned the ocean on the Gist – that I’m making a proxy entry: Jerred Seveyka’s blog, which is either cleverly or indecipherably named Cnido-Site Discharge depending on your level of coral reef knowledge.

Jerred is a dedicated community-college biology instructor deep in the central Washington heartland of Yakima. (You may never have heard of the town, but you’ve eaten plenty of its apples.) Like so many of us, his heart belongs to the ocean. He usually spends summer vacations on a coral reef somewhere – and this year he has scored a sabbatical (sabbeachical?) that sends him to a variety of them. Right now he’s in Belize helping volunteers survey for reef fish, wrestle crocodile for science, and look for sea turtles, among other things.

He started a blog almost as an afterthought, but Internet access from Halfmoon Caye seems remarkably good, judging by all the photos and video he’s uploading. Jerred is interested in almost everything he comes across, especially ugly fish, beach trash, allometric scaling relationships, and things he can take 3-D pictures of. His posts tend to be sharp vignettes of life and research in the salt and sun – you can look elsewhere for sunsets and Coronas. His posts are totally refreshing. Go read them.

About the Scribbler

Hugh Powell is a little weary of big-ticket items like Pluto, the Mars rover, and small fossilized humans getting all the science news coverage. Keep an eye out here for wisps and scraps you won't find anywhere else. Particularly about the ocean, which is really cool and, honestly speaking, much bigger than you think.